The West Ham striker curse is well documented. Before the last transfer window, Planet Football ran an article that began, ‘West Ham have signed an astonishing 55 forwards since David Gold and David Sullivan bought the club in January 2010 – and the vast majority of them have been pretty useless’.
Reflecting on the likes of Jordan Hugill, Benni McCarthy and Albian Ajeti, fans would probably consider that verdict understatedly polite. The shining lights among the glut of ignominious signings are undoubtedly current club captain Jarrod Bowen and our Premier League record goalscorer Michail Antonio, whom Bilić tried playing at right-back before Moyes converted him from a winger into a centre-forward.
However, even Antonio has been testing the patience of fans for some time now. Writing in April 2022, as our season began to implode after an infuriatingly inactive January transfer window, I half-joked of a future in which a 33-year-old Antonio was still our sole centre-forward.
At the time of writing he is nearing 35, hasn’t scored since April – excluding one for Jamaica against Honduras – and has just been selected to start against Brentford, eliciting howls of derision from all corners of social media. In fairness to Antonio, he should have been an impact sub for the past year or so and it’s not his fault that various managers and directors of football seem incapable of finding an adequate replacement.
By the time you read this, Niclas Füllkrug will have hopefully regained fitness and shown the form that made him a starter in the Champions League final for Borussia Dortmund. In his absence however, it’s only natural to think what could have been had we secured an alternative transfer target.
The surest thing of the season was Jhon Durán scoring a late winner for Villa in our opening game after weeks of agitating to join the Hammers. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think he was worth the £40m Villa were holding out for based on what I saw last season, but then that’s just one of the reasons why I’m not a scout.
If he is able to maintain his blistering start to 2024/25 then the mooted interest from Barcelona means he’s likely to be wearing blaugrana rather than claret and blue before long. I wouldn’t count Raphinha, who has recently captained Barça, as one that got away, because the links to the then-Leeds winger had all the hallmarks of a David Sullivan phantom bid.
As for his Brazilian teammate Neymar, we supposedly offered £12m when the wonderkid’s release clause was double that, quelle surprise. The uncharacteristic willingness to pay £25m for Luis Guilherme is perhaps the long-term upshot of that particular bout of parsimony.
Given that the transfer rumour mill is ever-churning, we probably all have a list of names that ‘got away’. The focus here is on forwards, although opining in October 2020 that Welsh centre-back Joe Rodon was ‘the one that got away’, as documented in Fortune’s Always Hiding: From Stratford to Seville, again proves that scouting is not my missed vocation.
I had to google what happened to him after Spurs, which is as a loan to Rennes and then a permanent move to Leeds in case you’re interested. Nevertheless, Duran is joined on my personal wishlist by Viktor Gyökeres. As with Allardyce’s doubts about Vardy’s ability to continue having a party at a higher level, taking a punt on players from the lower leagues is a risky business, made a little less fraught by the lighter price tags.
Brentford were amply rewarded for giving a chance to Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney, both of whom have been linked with West Ham and both of whom looked quality for Exeter and Peterborough respectively. Of course, things don’t always work out – Gyökeres was on the books at Brighton, owned by professional gambler Tony Bloom, without ever starting a match.
The south coast club also own Abdallah Sima, persistently linked with us when he was at Slavia Prague, who has yet to play for the Seagulls but has had a series of loan moves, some more successful than others.
Ibrahim Osman could well be a carbon copy. But back to Gyökeres, who was banging in the goals for Coventry in the Championship aged 23. The Swede’s pace and strength seemed to make him an ideal Antonio replacement.
And since joining Sporting Lisbon, his goals to games ratio is matched only by Erling Haaland. Portugal’s Primeira Liga is still considered inferior to England’s, and rightfully so, but Gyökeres value has shot up from a transfer fee of €20m to a reported release clause of €100m. Oh to have had a bit of that rather than spunking £13m on Danny Ings.
At the end of the day, however, all this ignores the West Ham version of Murphy’s Law, which states that if it can go wrong, it will. In an alternative universe we’re lamenting not putting up £45m for Champions League finalist Séb Haller or £35m for Europa League winner Gianluca Scamacca, while Ings is enjoying a late-career resurgence scoring the goals that propel Southampton above us in the table.
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